Teachers for International School of Kazan had to be looked for on Facebook and headhunters
Despite the problems of employment of foreigners, only two citizens of the Russian Federation were among the teachers of the secondary school
International School of Kazan, which had only a primary school, is opening the secondary school. However, the international school faced a lack of appropriate personnel because of strict requirements for teachers. All in all, 8 out of 10 new teachers are foreigners who will have Russian-speaking assistants. Directors of Kazan schools say the problem of high-skilled teachers with or without work experience in international educational institutions is common for all leading schools of the educational rating. However, not always it is possible to solve the problem with the help of foreigners.
IT experts are looked for on Facebook
The International School of Kazan is looking for a worker who would teach advanced technologies for the 5th graders in the format of a project activity. The thing is that the school will admit the 5th-8th graders this year. This year about 220 children will come to the school. Senior class students are not admitted yet. But it is planned to increase the number of pupils up to 600 people. Now the teaching staff of the school has had 10 teachers, 8 of them are foreigners.
As the head of the IT department of the school Mukhammed Zagidullin told Realnoe Vremya: 'The most important requirement is that the worker must know English because the whole educational process will be in English. It is also compulsory to have work experience in engineering equipment (Computer Numeric Control machine tools, lathes and grinders), 3D design skills (work experience in dealing with 3D printers and scanners). It would be great if the person were good at robotics and knew Lego, Arduino and VEKS platforms.
The majority of the department workers are technicians. Two people will give classes. One of them (a foreigner) has already been hired. Zagidullin said no technical diploma, no international certificate are needed. Only a professional interview will demonstrate everything: 'We need to see whether a person is able to handle it. An entire floor was designed for the engineering centre. This is why we would like the future teacher to be able to not only give interesting lectures but also have a vision of the strategic development of the educational centre,' he added.
Again French tutors
The teaching staff of the International School will be expanded. At the moment we hire teachers for this year only. But the number of pupils will grow. Consequently, new specialists will be needed,' the secondary school coordinator Ilsur Salimgareyev said. 'We mainly admit first-class foreign specialists. If a person just speaks English or has worked at an international school, it is not enough. Work experience in an international educational establishment is important,' he added. Now the majority of the school teachers have worked at international schools in the USA, UAE, China, Japan and South Korea. And each of them has an assistant who speaks Russian.
Facebook as a means of a search of a teacher is likely to be an exception. The school administration mainly serves as a headhunter and attracts certain teachers by using personal acquaintances and addresses specialised consulting companies. It also uses Job Fairs.
Neither Zagidullin nor Salimgareyev explained how they manage to attract teachers. They assured the minimum salaries start from 30,000 rubles. No one knows how much money teachers are paid after these requirements.
'It is not easy to work with foreign teachers – there is a mountain of paperwork: a risk of deportation, strict requirements'
Search of foreigners was not a whim but a necessity dictated by the concept of the school. Firstly, it is difficult to find a teacher who has worked in an international educational establishment in Russia in principle. Secondly, it turned out Kazan is facing a deficit of first-class teachers.
'It is known, it is all about the people. There is a competition in the attraction of good teachers among the schools of our city because it is difficult to find good teachers in the labour market, especially if we are speaking about hard sciences like Physics, Maths, Chemistry,' told the director of the Kazan boarding school No. 2 Irek Rizvanov.
The director of the Lyceum No. 7 for Gifted Children Albert Akhmetov told the competition for good teachers among the schools is high because these teachers demonstrate good results in state exams and Olympiads. The latter, in turn, affects the rating of a school. This is why first-class teachers are very valuable. At the same time there is a number of problems while working with foreign teachers.
'It is not easy to work with foreign teachers – there is a mountain of paperwork: a permission to hire a foreign worker, registration, etc. In addition, there is a risk of deportation for insignificant reasons, as it might seem. Sometimes a couple of administrative fines are enough. Foreign teachers are bad at working with documents (filling in the register, making up an educational programme and so on). <…> Strict requirements of foreign teachers are another significant disadvantage. Our teacher's salary converted in dollars or euros turns out miserable for the majority of them. For this reason, as a rule, the attraction of foreign teachers is a prerogative of private schools that can provide them with such a high salary,' says Akhmetov.
Teachers criticise the very idea to teach and communicate in English. The director of the Gymnasium No. 7 Lyubov Kochneva, who has studied educational methods abroad, thinks it is worth 'breaking' the child and try to teach him or her to think in English if only the kid certainly is not going to make a career in Russia.
Anyway, the subject and theoretical base is the most important thing: 'Our senior students who study in Russian go abroad every year: to the States, Canada, Great Britain, and always shine. Our base for foreigners is just a 'firework'. And a phrase like 'Singaporean method' is just 'talking through your hat'.